If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I have a concern for education and the direction it is headed.

There is a thread or discussion going on the Chemistry Education Discussion List (or CHEM-ED list for short) about the nature of education today.  It started with some questions about when classes were being scheduled and such schedules are driven by the needs or desires of the students.

If you are interested in reading this discussion, go to http://mailer.uwf.edu/listserv/wa.exe?S1=chemed-l and put "When did this happen?" in the first box (marked "string").  You should get some 57 "hits" (including the new thread "Effective Teaching").

But, as many discussions or threads do, there has been a shift from the need to accommodate or meet the needs of students to the demands students place on the instructional process (often called the "student as the consumer" model).  There is a passing reference to this model in my post for Transfiguration Sunday ("Transformation Sunday"); to save you the trouble, read "Avogadro goes to court".

Now when I posted my note about the court case to the list, one respondent suggested that it was nothing more than an urban legend.  But, as I noted in response, a Google search for "students suing the instructor" produced 175,000 hits.  Some of these are legitimate cases but others point out the idea that many students come into class with the idea that they are consumers and they have a right to decide if what they receive is the what they wanted (i.e., student as a consumer).

I also discovered that this problem is not as new as some think but has been around for at least fifteen years.  See

1. "Student as Consumer": A Critical Narrative of the Commercialization of Teacher Education
2. ”Should We Buy the "Student-As-Consumer" Metaphor?”

Against this backdrop, I find a little bit of good news.  The George Lucas Educational Foundation has identified a number of educators, the "Daring Dozen", who are working to change the system.  It may not seem like twelve people (the number that the foundation has identified) may make a major change in the ways things work but Margaret Mead reminds us "…that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does."  Or if you will, as Sonia Johnson (an American feminist who was excommunicated by the Mormon church for her activities), "We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history."

It would seem to me that there is hope for our educational system and that we need to be taking note of these changes.

This will be cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 8:22 am and is filed under Education, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.